Why the Future Office will be as much about Fun as it is about Work

Google’s headquarters in Zurich has a massage room, aquarium and a slide to deliver engineers smoothly and quickly to the canteen.

Deloitte’s Amsterdam office was designed with one empty room on each floor for employees to put whatever they wanted in them – most have gone for games such as table football.

At LinkedIn’s Californian HQ there is a music room, stocked with keyboards, drums, guitars and audio equipment.

And allowing employees to bring their pets to work is increasingly common.

So when did our offices turn into playgrounds, and does this represent the new way of working?

Technological advances mean that staff can avoid the drudgery of commuting and work from home, coffee shops, or any number of exotic locations. So some companies are working extra-hard to make their offices more attractive places to be.

A report from US software giant Citrix forecast that by 2020, 70% of people would work away from the office as often as they work at a desk.

“Offices are expensive and office space will decline”, says Citrix vice president Jacqueline de Rojas.

This is partly due to bosses realising that not all jobs need to be done from an office, but also because employees are increasingly demanding a better work-life balance, she adds.

That doesn’t mean that the office will die, though.

“Offices will become places of collaboration and connection because culturally we need touch points as we are social animals,” she says.

Wellbeing Worx founder, Helen Hart, says that “We are seeing many big companies like Google and Deloitte installing special wellbeing facilities for their staff, but not all companies can afford this. At Wellbeing Worx, we provide services for companies of all sizes and we don’t need any special equipment to deliver at-your-desk massage or the other services we provide. You can have a great impact on your staff wellbeing and performance without it costing your company a fortune.”

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